You’re not going to like this and it pains me to say so but Gomorrah: The Origins is not in the same league as Gomorrah. The wardrobe is more stylish, the characters are more approachable, the dialogue is more expensive, the locations are more attractive, the plotting is more comprehensible, and the mise-en-scène is lusher, more cinematic and less spare. But in the context of the original, these qualities aren’t so much a virtue as a capitulation.

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Gomorrah (or Gomorra – La Serie, as it was in Italian, so one can never remember whether or not to include the ‘h’) ran on Sky Atlantic for five seasons from 2014 to 2021. This was a period where Anglo-American TV had long since begun its inexorable decline into glib, shallow and predictable diversity-cast wokedom. But Gomorrah felt more like a throwback to the grit, integrity and authenticity of the Get Carter era because it was made by hicks in Italy who weren’t yet aware of the new rules.

It was based on books by the Italian journalist Roberto Saviano about the brutal 1990s clan wars to control the cocaine and heroin trade in his home city of Naples, where the local Mafia are known as the Camorra. Though he sold millions of books, Saviano bitterly regrets........

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